A major section of the collected material relates to policies and practices,
including the use of torture, forced labour, military contingents, etc, in the
collection of the tax on land which for about 125-150 years accounted for some
60% to 80% of the total revenue collection of the British state in India. The
British themselves felt both around 1800 as well as during 1857-1858 that the
tax on land "was collected by them at the point of the bayonet". There
were often areas and times when the total land tax of specific areas very nearly
equalled the gross agricultural produce, and at times even exceeded it.

The British hold on India and the extraction of the maximum possible wealth
from it also enabled Britain to conquer and control the region from St. Helena
to Hongkong for over a century on the basis of Indian resources, and in erecting
the British created metropolises of Calcutta, Bombay, Madras, Delhi, and the
countless military cantonments; innumerable halting places were built for the
British officer class from much before 1800; and having settled in as seemingly
permanent conquerors the British built residences and parks, and clubs for the
officers who administered the districts of British India as also of what was
known as Indian native states. As John Stuart Mill wrote in 1858; not a penny
was spent from Britain for the conquest and control of India and the areas around
it from St. Helena on the west coast of Africa to Hongkong in the China seas.
All the resources came from India itself.

During the major famines of the later 19th century a British economist who
had been sent from Britain had enquired from the British Viceroy what used to
happen during draught and famines about the realization of the tax on land in
pre British times. The Viceroy, perhaps reluctantly, replied, that in those
days if there was no production there was no tax either. But he added immediately
that we cannot follow such practice. Our expences are fixed and they have to
be incurred so we must keep up the realization of the tax even when there was
little or no produce. We can at the most make our tax assessment moderate.

The Indian position had been very different. In many regions of India, especially
in the coastal areas there was no tax on land. The state income arose from taxes
on trade and commerce. In the rest, perhaps three-fourth of the Indian agricultural
area, some one-fifth to one-half of the total land was assigned for local purposes
like remuneration for the militia, police, and accounting purposes; for the
maintenance of the village infrastructure, including maintenance of irrigation
sources, channels, etc, which had a share of some 4% of the gross agricultural
produce, and a substantial share was received by major cultural, religious and
educational institutions of the region, and some times even by those situated
a thousand or more miles away. In all, it seems that, around one-third of the
cultivated land was anciently permanently assigned to institutions and professionals
not to be disturbed by any authority, and around one-third of the gross agricultural
produce was again distributed amongst the infrastructure, which in many places
could have meant as many as 50-100 persons and institutions. In one district
of Bengal those who felt they had a claim to some assignment numbered around
60,000 in the 1 770s. Further, despite the claimed Islamic over-lordship of
Bengal from c. 1200-1750, the religious and cultural assignments in 1770 Bengal
were in the proportion of 10 to 1 as between Hindu and Muslim institutions and
persons.

According to accounts from Bengal (c. 1770s) as well as south India (c. 1800)
it was stated that the amount of tax which a land-assignee received was only
around one-third to one-fourth of what the British had started to demand from
the areas they began to control. This and other data seems to suggest that the
land which paid tax according to Indian norms till around 1800 paid it at around
10-15% of the gross agricultural produce.

The British fixed the tax from land, receivable by the British Indian state,
formally at fifty percent of the average gross produce and took the tax in money
after converting in money, at some calculated average prices, the estimated
agricultural produce of the cultivator. To this were added various other dues
by which earlier the village community may have remunerated some members of
the village infrastructure, or that allotted for repair of irrigation sources,
etc, and thus the share of the British state came around to sixty percent. This
was initiated in Bengal and Bihar around 1780 A.D. But most years, after the
start of British dominance, became either years of depression, or of acute scarcity,
draught, famine, etc, and thus what the peasant had actually to pay at least
till after 1860 was more like 70% to 80% of his total production. In certain
regions and during many years the land tax even exceeded the total produce,
and in the Madras presidency it was found, from around 1830s, that some of the
most fertile and easily irrigable lands had gone out of cultivation because
even the total produce of such lands could not pay the land tax. It is estimated
that around one-third of the most fertile land in Madras pesidency had gone
out of cultivation by around 1840 and thus brought about what the British termed
as substantial "decay" of revenue.

But for the British, though it created financial difficulties for the state,
this was nothing for worry. Around 1750, the rent from land in Britain and in
most other European countries is stated to have ranged between 50% and
80% of the gross agricultural produce. The share of the British agricultural
labourer, or temporary tenant, who did the actual cultivation and production
is estimated at 18% of the total gross produce even around 1800. So the rack-renting,
sequestering of the produce, etc, and thus the resourcelessness and misery of
the Indan peasant was nothing unforeseen for the British conquerors. These things
had been happening in their own lands for centuries. There would be hundreds
of taluks in India where the people remained starved for years on end, where
the population got reduced by half every decade, like in Palnad in Andhra Pradesh
in the first half of the 19th century, and which ultimately broke the peoples
back. However such breaking of ordinary peoples backs, must have gone
on in most of Europe for centuries till around 1920.

SECTION IX

It is perhaps the West which in its quest about its past, time and again, comes
out with hypothesis or data which even a century earlier would have been considered
as fiction and wholly unbelievable. In 1966 some American scholars came out
with an estimate of the 1492 aboriginal human population of the Americas as
having been between 90 to 112 millions. The conventional estimates till then
put the aboriginal American population in 1492 as around 10 million. The estimate
of 90-112 million has now been moved up by scholars to 140 millions.

The pre-1492 American civilizations had been considered as not very old till
a decade or two ago. Now archaeologists date them to anywhere between 30,000
to 50,000 years back with indications of high sophistication in manners and
life. The idea of the poor primitives seems to have gone overboard for much
of America, if not also for the inhabitants of other continents.

There are recent studies on African demography. According to them the population
of Africa south of the Sahara around 1500 was quite possibly double ofwhat it became in the 19th and early 20th centuries. We need to acquaint
ourselves with these studies and their methodologies.

It has been generally agreed for long that ever since 1492 Europe has been
on a mission of plunder of the dominated or conquered areas as they fell to
it from time to time. As for India, according to Alexander Walker, the conqueror
of Malabar and Gujarat around 1795 to 1809, "it has been computed that
Nadir Shah carried out of India 30 million Sterling, but the spoils of the East
India Company [That is in reality that taken by Britain] have probably exceeded
that sum a hundred fold.... The drain which we have made from India have been
less violent than the exaction's of other conquerors, but they have perhaps
in their operation proved more destructive and deadly to the people. They have
emptied gradually, but the pitcher has gone constantly to the well. There has
been no relaxation. The demand has been regular and unremitting." Walker
wrote this around 1820. After that the British were in India for another 130
years. What went before would have continued perhaps with greater pressure as
the Indian resistance got weaker and weaker. What Walker describes for India
must equally apply to other areas of the world which fell to Europe.

But even the more crucial data relates to the totality of industrial production
in the world around 1750. The current estimates are that what today is known
as the Third World (principally China and India) then accounted for 73% of world
manufacturing output. As late as 1830, their share was still 60%. That China
was far in advance of the West in science and technology till about 1850 is
now fairly well known. Such advancement of China was there even 2,000 years
before 1850, while the West reached this point only around the mid-l9th century.

Those of us who concern ourselves with demography and population trends in
India know that till around 1900, in most regions of India, the proportionate
number of females was somewhat larger than the males. But in the 90 years since
the census of 1901, this proportion has gone down countrywide as much as by
6%, that is while there were around 980 females to 1000 males in 1901 now in
1991 it is around 920 females. And this has happened in a period when women
are said to have an improved status and greater rights.

The questions which one can raise are innumerable. According to the census
data of the period 1881-1911 out of every 5 females (including a girl of 3 months
as well as an elderly woman of 80) one was, on an India-wide average, a widow.
How did this come about? and what really happened to the men. My own understanding
is that British rule and its various impositions. and before that the disturbance
in certain areas created by Islamic rulers, smashed the organisation and norms
of Indian society whereby it felt lost and aimless. To survive somehow the Indians
made what remained, frozen, thinking that at least something will get saved.
The Indologists and the Indian scholars dependant on them gave these deformed
remnants a literal legitimacy and the happenings of the period of British rule
were made to be forgotten, or treated as resulting from the will of Kala.
If I may make a conjecture, the number of people who were killed by the
British and their policies between 1748-1947, was not just a few lakh martyrs
as is generally assumed, or a few crores who died in the famines or in the plagues,
etc, but was somewhere between 20-50 crores of people who died in all possible
ways, but due to British action and policy.

Such an elimination of conquered people has been the norm wherever Europe has
gone as conqueror in its long history. But it is not only in non-European regions
that such elimination was carried out. In the case of Britain this has been
practiced nearer home, in Ireland, for several centuries. And quite possibly
the elimination which might have taken place after the conquest of England by
William the Conqueror was no different. It has to be remembered that the dominant
European instinct is that of a killer. That India also experienced it should
be examined as the norm. And if it is found that something like this did take
place it should explain not only the fact of "out of 5 females 1 was a
widow" but a whole range of events which transformed the people of India
from being fearless to a state of unending fearfulness.